70s Joshi on Wednesday: Kumano! Ikeshita!

76. 1979.12.11 - 01 Mami Kumano vs. Yumi Ikeshita

K: For the 2nd time this year, the two biggest heels in the company are squaring off in a singles match. This time Mami Kumano is the aggressor right from the start, running at Ikeshita taking swings at her head. Looking really keen for a big fight. Ikeshita backs off and leaves the ring. You could read it as her being a bit taken aback by how ferociously Kumano was coming at her, or maybe she was just being composed and frustrating Kumano's attempt to jump her.

There's a clip early on which does break up following narrative a bit, but it appears that whatever Ikeshita was trying didn't work, as Kumano is right at on the outside and is actually taking it to her really well, considering Ikeshita is the senior here (remember Kumano wasn't even in the original Black Pair). 

This is very clipped down so I can only cover this broadly but I think we saw enough to get flavour of what went down. Kumano continues to have the upper hand on Ikeshita, it would be one hell of a heel beatdown if Ikeshita somehow never comes across as sympathetic even if when I describe things it might sound like it's setting up a babyface comeback. We do get that comeback, but it feels more like revenge. She throws Kumano off the top rope and hits some good moves, to which Kumano retaliates by getting handed The Wrench and blasts Ikeshita in the head with it and doesn't even attempt to hide it from the referee. 

The referee however does feel the need to intervene when Ikeshita brings in a massive metal suitcase and starts clobbering Kumano with it. Not that that does much good, she just floors him with it before continuing to grind Kumano into dust like an angry maniac. The ref calls for the DQ  and that's the end of that. We only saw about 5 minutes and that was enough to see these are two meanass girls who wanna win fights by any means necessary. No sentiment between tag partners at all.

MD: I thought this was great for the five minutes, super clipped, that we have it. I wish we had the whole thing. I wonder if Kumano and Ikeshita talked about the fact that Kumano’s entrance jacket only had one arm and if Kumano tried to convince Ikeshita to have the opposite arm cut off? No? Kumano had a weird splash of color in her hair. Ok, enough about that.

What I loved here was the familiarity and the fact that when these two were in with one another, they’d push each other just a little bit more. Or at least that’s the sense I got. There was a transition where Ikeshita pushed off the turnbuckles and flipped to her feet out of a belly to back position. And later when Kumano tried the seated senton off the top, Ikeshita broke it up in a way I hadn’t quite seen before in the footage. 

After Ikeshita finally did take over, Kumano went for a small jagged object (Kad says a wrench). It was a bit jarring since it felt like a line was crossed between teammates. Ikeshita was able to avoid it and get her down but when she went for the pin, Ikeshita jabbed up at her. Again, striking stuff. Ikeshita came back with the dreaded metal box and caused havoc to the point the ref had to call it. Glorious chaos for the time we had. They went so hard against each other.